Too many kidnappings, abusive men, and damaged women spoil the broth.
An indomitable rookie crime reporter with a deeply troubled past pursues an even more disturbed serial kidnapper.
Sawyer Brooks was orphaned a month ago when her mother, who’d long covered for her abusive, pedophiliac husband, shot him to death and was shot in turn by one of her own daughters––Sawyer's sister Aria. Growing up in that family, Sawyer has learned to accept her place at the foot of the table—a spot she now fills at the Sacramento Independent, where she survives on the crumbs that fall from the plate of veteran reporter David Lutz. But she can’t let go of the disappearance of 12-year-old Riley Addison. She can’t believe that Riley was harmed by Mark Brennan, the piano teacher from whose doorstep she vanished—even though he grew up in a nearby town that was home to another victim three years ago. When she challenges Detective Perez, whose wrath she already incurred in Don’t Make a Sound (2020), because the blood he found on Brennan’s front steps and matched with Riley’s blood wasn’t there the day before, when Sawyer and Aria interviewed Brennan, Perez stares her down. And he demands that she be pulled off the story after a hot lead she supplies about another possible kidnapper turns into an embarrassment and a possible lawsuit against the police. Defying all obstacles, Sawyer presses on, linking Riley’s case to half a dozen other abductions over the years. She’s so sharply focused that she has no idea that her other sister, Harper, is dealing with their traumatic family history in an even more cathartic way: by taking an active role in The Crew, a group of female vigilantes who deal out summary justice to abusers from their pasts.
Too many kidnappings, abusive men, and damaged women spoil the broth.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5420-9390-3
Page Count: 284
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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